Senior Seminar – Hong Kong 2015

“How Sustainable is the Massification of Asia Pacficic Higher Education?”

A senior seminar was held at the Hong Kong Institute of Education and Lingnan University in coordination with the Asian University Leaders Program November 12-14, 2015. The organizing research question was: How Sustainable is the Current Massification of Asian Pacific Higher Education? We were focused on issues such as: Is the region approaching a time of reassessment of this approach of unquestioned expansion and massification, particularly as the region appears to be following a particular HE paradigm? How to conceptualize sustainability? For example do the issues go beyond financial ones, but might they also also involve questions such as those focused on state capacity / capability in managing change in higher education, as well as implications for sustainable development in cultural, social, economic and political sense, especially when modern universities are under great pressure for productivity sometimes at the expense of culture and value preservation. Papers from this seminar are being prepared for a volume that has been submitted to Routledge to be edited by Ka Ho Mok, Deane Neubauer and Jia Jiang.